Literature /
Nemesis Series

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Nemesis is a series of superhero novels by April Daniels.

Before dying Dreadnought, the world's greatest superhero, passes on his powers to a young closeted trans girl named Danny Tozer. As a byproduct of the transfer Danny is transformed into her ideal self, making it impossible to hide her gender anymore.

There are two published novels so far:

Dreadnought (January 2017) deals with Danny adjusting to her new life while trying to stop Dreadnought's murderer.

Sovereign (July 2017) meets Danny, now an established superhero, about 9 months later, facing a new threat.

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Dreadnought contains examples of:

Abnormal Ammo: Calamity has a wide array of ammo types for her revolvers (as well as a selection of grenades), some fairly regular, some less so. Her trademark "jelly rounds" are a case in point.

Abusive Parents: Danny's father is bigoted and extremely verbally abusive, to the point where she has permanent hearing damage from always being screamed at. Her mother is either unable or unwilling to intervene, and tries to "buy off" Danny by way of apology after particularly bad outbursts.

Achilles' Heel: Dreadnought is incredibly resilient to physical attacks and extreme temperatures, and can hold her breath for hours at a time, but doesn't have much more resistance to electricity than a baseline human. She is also vulnerable to magic.

All There in the Manual: In-universe, there is mention of an ethics manual specifically for dealing with Dreadnought's powers, and a general orientation guide for young metahumans. The latter seems like a reasonable thing for a long-standing superteam like the Legion Pacifica to have on hand, but the former definitely overlaps with Crazy-Prepared.

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Animesque: Doc Impossible appears to be fond of using Anime-style characters in the UI for her hypertech devices.

Armor-Piercing Question: Valkyrja drops one on Danny at the end of their second meeting, when she asks whether Danny feels safe at home, and offers her quarters at Legion Tower. Danny doesn't know how to respond and leaves in a hurry.

Artistic License  Physics: Notably Averted, for the most part. While superpowers are basically magic, their interaction with the real world pays attention to physical realities: flyers need to worry about wind resistance and atmospheric oxygen levels (as well as G forces when they're carrying baseline humans), metahumans that can shrug off artillery shells will still suffer significant injuries when hit with space debris at orbital velocities, etc.

Big Bad: In the first book, we have Utopia, a cyborg-themed supervillain. In the second, we get Sovereign, a fascist billionaire.

Big Damn Heroes: Not surprisingly for a superhero novel, there are several such moments. In Dreadnought, the stand-out moments (acknowledge in-universe) are Danny's airplane rescue early on, and the successfully averted mecha attack in the climax.

Character Title: Dreadnought is named after the hero that gives Danny her powers, whose role Danny takes on.

Child Soldiers: Sarah and (as of Book 2) Danny qualify as this, being 15-year olds that regularly participate in combat engagements, and there's plenty of evidence of it really messing with their heads.

Sarah doesn't really seem to have a social life outside of going caping, and is completely desensitized to violence. There's a scene where Danny and Sarah interview a henchman with Sarah repeatedly assaulting and verbally threatening the subject that culminates in this exchange that's equal parts hilarious and deeply disturbing:

Danny: That was nice good cop, bad cop we did there. Sarah (blank and confused): We were doing what now?

As of Sovereign, Danny is turning into a Blood Knight, which has everyone close to her (Sarah included) really worried about her recklessness and extreme brutality. Both Sarah and Danny display clear symptoms of PTSD.

It's worth noting that the Legion's bylaws specifically try to avoid this by forbidding minors from holding full memberships. But Danny is forced into her role when almost the entire Legion's active roster is wiped out, leaving Danny the sole A-list heavy hitter in the Pacific Northwest.

Classical Anti-Hero: Danny fits the bill for most of Dreadnought, being untrained and full of doubts; she's slowly starting to get better (which is to say, more self-assured) by the end.

Coming-Out Story: Danny starts the first book as a closeted, pre-transition transgender female and ends with her publicly coming out as transgender and lesbian. Several of the major story beats are about her gender and superhero identities being outed; see Forced Out of the Closet below.

Dark and Troubled Past: Sarah's powers are hereditary, thanks to the super-serum her grandfather was injected with, but they come with about a 50% chance of dying from leukemia within ten years of exposure. Two of Sarah's brothers didn't make it, and Sarah herself had leukemia as a child, although the cancer now seems to be in remission.

Distinction Without a Difference: in-universe, "superpowers" and "special abilities" are essentially the same thing, but the word "superpowers" is heavily coded for the superhero/supervillain lifestyle, whereas people with "special abilities" just lead normal lives.

Doomed Protagonist: Dreadnoughts tend to be the first line of defense against whatever world ending threat may pop up. No Dreadnought has ever died of natural causes, and Danny doesn't expect to be the exception.

Dragon with an Agenda: Graywytch in the second book. Sovereign was never going to win. Even if the heroes hadn't stopped him Graywytch had already hijacked his master plan, and made sure she could easily defeat him.

Eldritch Abomination: Nemesis seems to be some sort of phenomenon that unmakes reality and may, or may not, be sentient.

The first time is when Doc Impossible makes the results of Danny's medical scan available to all Legion members, accidentally outing Danny to the trans-hating Graywytch.

The second time, it's Graywytch outing Danny's superhero identity to her parents.

The third and final time, it's when a photo of Danny with her mask shredded makes the rounds after a large battle, exposing her secret identity to the public. After this, Danny's had enough and publicly comes out as both transgender and lesbian in her first press interview as Dreadnought.

Gendercide: Greywytch's ultimate plan is to kill all men. It comes disturbingly close to succeeding, resulting in the deaths of millions of people, including many trans women and intersex individuals as well as numerous cis women who were killed in the resulting chaos. The total death toll was in the millions.

Legion-affiliated superheroes recommend that minors with superpowers use "throw away colors" (basically gray camouflage) for their suits, to declare themselves nonpartisan until they become of age. Almost every non-Legion cape in the story points out that only Legion-affiliated minors do this, so throw away colors are a dead giveaway.

GPS Evidence: Calamity and Danny manage to figure out where one of Utopia's henchmen lives from a single napkin he used. Justified because they enroll the help of a literal wizard (Sarah's friend Charlie) to do it.

Healing Factor: Dreadnought has one; while not Wolverine-level, she recovers from internal organ damage that would kill a normal human while feeling not much worse than sore, and broken bones completely heal within a few days.

Her cheeks graduate to a full-on blush and she laughs. "It's fine, Danny. Let's get out of here."

We get some food at a diner, and this is something I can afford so I insist that she lets me treat her. She spends the meal smiling deeply, staring out the window and flicking occasional glances my way. It's nice having a friend.

Paper-Thin Disguise: Sarah is very obviously Calamity, and Danny figures it out on their third meeting.

Plant Person: Chlorophyll. Has a super-powered sister, "Aloe", that judging by her name also seems to be this.

Precision F-Strike: when Danny, steaming after a particularly bad encounter with her dad, wants to "go find a mugger to beat up", Sarah refuses her in no uncertain terms.

Sarah: "I'm not going anywhere with you while you're being like this." Danny: "Being like what?" Sarah: "A bitch. Danny, what is up with you?"

Reality Warper: Dreadnought, once again. Her flight, super strength etc. derive from her being able to manipulate the "lattice", described as "the underside of reality". Beyond just her "stock" superpowers, Danny practices manipulating the lattice directly and appears to be much more adept at this than at least her immediate predecessor, if the finale is any indication.

The Call Knows Where You Live: or at least Calamity does, and she thinks it would be a total waste for you to wait to turn 18 before you start caping.

The Scream: Danny does this after her first meeting with the Legion turns first into a discussion of whether she should be allowed to join, and then into a shouting match about whether she should be "allowed" to keep the mantle of Dreadnought at all.

The first novel, "Dreadnought", opens with Dannie receiving the powers of a dying superhero, which has the side effort of transforming her into her idealised self. Notably the series was written by a trans woman specifically as a Power Fantasy for young transgender adults.

Super Serum: Sarah's grandfather was unwillingly used as a lab rat for one. It worked, and the effects can be inherited, but the government doesn't know that, and Sarah's family is planning on keeping it that way.

Finally, after Danny has been framed for murder and arrested, the "superhero community" (but probably mostly Aloe) rally to post her bail.

The Good, the Bad, and the Evil: whitecapes, graycapes, and blackcapes respectively, although only the most self-righteous whitecape would describe the situation using the words in the trope name.

Whitecapes are "official" heroes. They work within the system, try to color strictly within the bounds of the law, and are able to secure official funding and support. Whitecapes tend to view graycapes as morally compromised opportunists or vigilantes.

Graycapes are more on the "masked vigilante" side of the spectrum. This can be because they resort to less-than-savory methods, out of cynicism ("the system is broken"), or simply because they're not given the opportunity to work within the system for whatever reason. They tend to view whitecapes as sanctimonious goody two-shoes with an over-simplistic worldview.

Blackcapes are outright super-criminals or villains with not much argument.

Two Roads Before You: Doc Impossible makes it abundantly clear to Danny that becoming a superhero is a life-long commitment with little chance of turning back (for you are likely to make enemies), that it's gonna cost her her chance of ever leading a normal life, and that the decision is hers alone to make.

Uncomfortable Elevator Moment: Doc Impossible and Danny (who's mad at her from her last visit) riding the elevator to Doc's lab on Danny's second visit to Legion Tower. Then the Doc decides to double down and breaks the ice by taking a long drag on her cigarette and mentioning that Valkyrja (whom Danny is crushing on) is straight.

Wicked Witch: Graywytch is somewhere between this and a Sociopathic Hero. In-story, we never actually see her do anything but make Danny's life hell, but seeing as she's a Legion Pacifica member in good standing, presumably she has done good at some point.

In Sovereign, she does everything she can to screw up Danny's life. And turns into an outright super villain.

Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Danny gets VERY close to this. By the end of Sovereign she puts her heroics on hold and starts seeing a therapist.

You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Calamity and Valkyrja in particular keep reassuring the incredible insecure Danny that she's a natural at superhero-ing and fully deserves to carry on Dreadnought's name.

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